End Of The Line
by clair beaubien
Summary: Steve watches found footage of Bucky being turned into the Winter Soldier. Rated for torture and heartbreak.
1. Chapter 1

Steve stood in front of the television a long time, one hand holding the DVD, the other hand hovering in front of the power button of the DVD player.

He stared at the DVD – all the footage that had been found of HYDRA's 'initiation' of Bucky into being the Winter Soldier, burned onto a disc that he could watch at SHIELD headquarters from the safe distance of decades later.

" _You sure you should be watching that?"_ Barton asked when he gave the DVD to Steve. _"Natasha asked me to deliver it to you, but she also asked me to talk you out of watching it."_

" _He'd do it for me."_

" _How do you think it would make him feel?"_

How would it make Bucky feel to know Steve had watched the filmed footage of him being tortured into accepting his role as the Winter Soldier? How would he feel knowing that Steve knew more than he probably even remembered himself?

Probably he wouldn't like it, maybe he'd even be angry if he found out, but Steve needed to know. He turned the machine on and plugged in the DVD before he let himself think any more about it.

The image – gray and white and black and bleeding into sepia – fuzzed and shuddered into life on the TV screen, drenched in 'snow' and out of sync with the scratchy audio that accompanied it.

A voice, German or Russian it was hard to tell, was barking orders. The camera was focused on his uniformed back, until it wobbled and jumped and moved to the side.

And there was Bucky, kneeling on the floor of a large room that looked completely made of cement blocks. His shirt was torn and his hands seemed to be tied behind him, but through the torn sleeve, Steve could see that he'd already been fitted with his metal arm. He was covered with bruises and blood, his hair was longer and he needed a shave, but he kept his head up and glared at the guard who was standing over him, barking out orders to him.

The quality of the audio kept Steve from understanding what Bucky was being ordered to do, but Steve recognized the steel in Bucky's eyes as stared calmly at the guard and said nothing. Even when the guard barked again and raised a club, tapping it into his hand, Bucky only lifted his chin and smiled.

Because of the off-sync audio, Steve heard the crack before he saw it; the guard swung the club and hit Bucky on the side of the head, sending him sprawling onto the floor. Steve wanted to reach through the TV and rip that guard's head off his neck, but he could only watch as another crack preceded the guard clubbing Bucky's right shoulder as he struggled off the floor back to his knees.

"… _find me_ …" Steve heard Bucky say, a few seconds before he mouthed it silently on the screen. Blood ran over the side of his face and dripped off onto his trousers. He was still smiling. "… _be sorry when he finds me_ …"

Several heavy thuds preceded the beating this time and though Steve kept his eyes on the screen, he didn't see what was happening. He was hearing what Bucky had said.

' _You'll be sorry when he finds me.'_

Bucky had expected Steve to find him. He'd expected Steve to rescue him, just like he'd rescued him from Red Skull.

Steve thought he was going to be sick.

The picture jumped and the sound hiccupped and the scene changed. Bucky was still in the same cement block room, his hands were tied in front of himself and he was sitting against the wall. His face was bruised and his eyes were black, but he still glared defiantly at the two guards standing over him.

This time the sound was more in sync with the action. One of the guards said something, it sounded Russian to Steve, and he held a bowl out toward Bucky.

" _Not interested,"_ Bucky answered.

The other guard shouted something, grabbed the bowl and slammed it onto the floor next to Bucky's leg. It looked like soup. The guard shouted again, pointing to the bowl, obviously demanding something. Bucky picked the bowl up with his bound hands and flung it at the guards, splashing the soup across their boots.

Steve heard the bowl spinning to a stop on the cement floor and he heard the thud of the guard punching Bucky in the face and he heard the crack of Bucky's head slamming into the wall.

He heard Bucky laugh through the beating.

 _Bucky expected Steve to save him._

The scene abruptly changed again. Bucky was sitting in the middle of the floor. The guards were wearing coats and gloves but Bucky was barefoot and shirtless. He was covered in blood and bruises and raised welts. His hair was longer and fell into his eyes when he raised his head. His beard was heavier and his bones and joints were starkly visible through his skin that was clearly covered in goose bumps.

"… _end of the line..."_ Bucky said. His voice was hoarse and his breath came out as frost. He was freezing. _"To the end of the line."_

The guards moved in, kicking and beating him, but this time he didn't laugh.

He was waiting for Steve to save him.

The next scene emerged through a jumble of melting film and bouncing audio. Bucky was face down on the floor, all skin and bones and horrible wounds. A dumped bowl of soup and a spilled cup of water lay near his right hand.

"He's not coming," an off screen voice said. A Russian voice speaking English.

"He'll find me," Bucky said, his voice cracking, muffled against the cement floor. "He found me once, he'll find me again. To the end of the line, that's what we always told each other: to the end of the line."

A man walked into the image. Not a guard, he was wearing a lab coat, not a uniform. He dragged Bucky up by the hair and shoved a newspaper at him.

" _End of the line."_

He let go of Bucky's hair and stepped back. Bucky's hands weren't tied and he pushed himself up and picked up the newspaper. Steve saw his own face on the front page and the words in large block print: _'missing and presumed dead'._

Bucky was finding out that Steve wasn't coming.

"No." Bucky's voice was raw. "No! This isn't real! This – this – isn't true. It isn't true!"

" _End of the line,"_ Lab-Coat Man sneered again. He pulled the paper away but Bucky grabbed at it with his metal hand.

"No! No – no – _please. Please!"_

A scrap of the paper ripped into his metal hand and Lab-Coat Man pried the hand open and pulled even that scrap away from Bucky. He marched away and Steve heard a heavy metal door open and close.

Bucky collapsed onto the floor, his metal hand outstretched, gulping sobs and swallows of air.

" _Please…"_

And Steve felt like he had a knife shoved down his esophagus.

The image whirred and rolled then, the audio sounded slow and distorted. The screen went black momentarily and then there was Bucky. He seemed to be in the same cement block room but now he was sitting on a small bed, like a cot from an infirmary, and there was a blue kerosene room heater on the floor near him. His hair and beard had been trimmed, and his face had been cleaned of all the blood. He was wearing thick socks, a heavy shirt and trousers, and he had a blanket around his shoulders.

A guard walked up to him and offered him a bowl and Bucky took it without a word or gesture and drank from it. He glanced up and seemed to only just realize there was a camera focused on him. He pulled his feet up onto the bed and turned his back to the camera and kept drinking from the bowl.

Steve grabbed the DVD player and threw it through the closest wall.

##

To be continued (because it's just too sad to leave it here.)


	2. Chapter 2

_Steve._

 _His name is Steve. He's small, bloodied, defiant._

 _Fists up, head up -_

' _You don't keep your head up in a fight, punk.' The voice is his own. Somehow he knows he chased the bully away and somehow he knows the voice is his own. 'You learn anything I taught you? Keep your head down.'_

 _Steve smiles and puts his head up a little higher. 'Jerk,' he says back, only it means something else and somehow he knows that he smiles too._

 _Then Steve is bigger. Even more defiant. The bully is a monster of red flesh and misshapen features and Steve chases him away just before jumping through an eruption of fire as the world implodes into cold and ice and blackness..._

Bucky shot up in bed, heart pounding, breathing hard, cold and sweating and disoriented.

It was a dream. It was that dream. That dream that he had over and over again. He hated that dream. It always ended with Steve dead.

 _Steve._

 _Steve was his friend._

 _His name was Bucky and Steve was his friend._

 _His name was -_

"Bucky?"

 _Steve_.

He looked over and saw Steve in the chair near the wall.

 _His name was Bucky. Steve was his friend and Steve wasn't dead._

Bucky knew he was in some kind of hotel-hospital-holding cell that was big and furnished, and it had an overstuffed reclining chair that Steve slept in every night since bringing him here nearly three weeks before.

He was in that chair now, sitting forward, eyes on Bucky.

"You okay, Buck?"

"You're not dead."

"No, I'm not dead," Steve said. He stood up from the chair and walked toward the bed.

 _His name was Bucky, Steve was his friend._

"You had that dream again?"

"I hate that dream."

"I can imagine." Steve gestured to the bed. "Can I sit?"

He always asked. Steve always asked when he wanted to sit near Bucky, or help him with his buttons or shoe laces or open a bottle of water for him or pretty much anything that Steve did around Bucky, he asked permission first.

Bucky nodded and Steve sat on the bed near his feet.

 _His name was Bucky. Steve was his friend._

"I wanted to be awake when you got back."

"I only got back a little while ago. Sooner than I thought. That thing I had to take care of, it didn't take as long as I thought it would."

Steve's eyes were dark, almost black, like he'd been hit.

 _Steve was his friend. Steve was hurt._

"Something's wrong," Bucky said.

"No, nothing's wrong. I just - I saw something I wish hadn't happened. Something I wish I didn't have to see."

"What did you see?"

Steve hesitated answering. His eyes swept back and forth as though he was searching for the answer.

" _My_ bad dream, I guess."

"It was about me," Bucky said. He pulled his feet up and turned to sit on the edge of the bed like Steve. "I'm sorry. Whatever it was, whatever -"

 _His name was Bucky, but his name was something else too, something that meant death and chaos and inevitable reckoning._

" _W_ hatever it was, I'm sorry."

"No, Buck. It wasn't anything you did. It wasn't. It was something I didn't do. Something I'm sorry for."

Bucky - _his name was Bucky -_ reached over to his bedside table. Somehow it was fitted with refrigerated drawers and those drawers were kept filled with water and juice, apples and oranges, crackers, yogurt, cheese cut into slices, pudding, and any other kind of food that fit in there that he could easily feed himself with.

From the deepest drawer, he pulled out two apples. He offered one to Steve - _Steve was his friend -_ and took a bite out of the other one.

"Sorry that you didn't kill me?" He asked. He had to ask.

"No! _No._ _Never_. Bucky - sorry I didn't save you."

That made no sense. Bucky looked around his quarters. It was maybe an over-decorated prison cell, but it was comfortable and he was safe here. No one could hurt him. No one could be hurt _by_ him.

"You did save me. I'm here. You saved me."

Steve looked confused, then he smiled, "Yeah," and ate his apple. But he kept his eyes on Bucky for a little while longer and Bucky thought something was still wrong, that he'd missed something in what Steve said.

He ate his apple and opened the drawer again to take out a bottle of water. He held it out to Steve, "Would you open this for me?" because whenever Steve seemed low, it seemed to help him if he could do something to help Bucky.

 _His name was Bucky. Steve was his friend. No one could hurt him._

"Sure."

"Thank you."

He drank the water and recapped the bottle, tossed his apple core into the wastebasket and stood up to walk to the bathroom.

"I'll be right back."

He crossed the room and went into the bathroom and closed the door behind himself.

 _His name was Bucky. He could have privacy._

He relieved himself and turned to the sink to wash his hands. He stared at his left hand. His metal hand. He hardly remembered he had a metal hand. It worked just as well, just as finely, as his flesh hand and he only remembered it was different when someone gaped at it.

 _His name was Bucky, Steve was his friend._

He washed and dried his hands, then forced himself to look in the mirror. It'd only been in the last week that he'd started pushing himself to look in the mirror and even then only once a day. He didn't remember everything, he hardly remembered anything, but what he remembered was sickening and he didn't want to see the man in those memories looking back at him.

 _He was Bucky Barnes._ _Steve was his friend. He was safe._

He raised his head, raised his eyes slowly, until he was looking himself full in the face in the mirror.

 _His name was Bucky._

His hair was longer than Steve's and went every which way, especially after he just woke up. His eyes always seemed wary and ringed in dark smudges that were uncomfortably familiar. His face was sharp planes and angles even though he'd been eating practically non-stop since he'd been here in this prison-cell-in-disguise.

It was a hard, haunted face. He didn't think Bucky Barnes was supposed to look like that, but he was Bucky Barnesand that's what he looked like.

 _His name was Bucky. Unspeakable things had been done to him. Unspeakable things had been done by him._

Steve was still at the bed when Bucky came out of the bathroom. He wasn't sitting anymore, he was straightening the blankets and turning the pillows.

"You meant then, didn't you?" Bucky asked and Steve turned and Bucky showed his metal hand. "You meant you couldn't save me _then_."

"Yeah," Steve admitted. He gave the blankets one last tug and sat on the edge of the bed again. "Yeah, I'm sorry I couldn't save you then."

Bucky nodded, _Steve was his friend,_ and even though he didn't want to, he asked, "What did you see?"

"I - " Steve drew the word out. " - saw when they told you I was dead."

 _Steve was his friend. Steve was alive._

"How did you see it?"

"We found the footage. They - they filmed you, and we found the footage."

 _His name was Bucky. He was safe. He was never going back._

"What happened? When they told me? What did I do?"

"Umm -" Steve picked at the blanket and didn't seem to want to say. "You cried."

"Oh." Bucky didn't think he could cry. He knew he couldn't laugh. He couldn't smile. He couldn't nod or shake his head or shrug. He didn't think he could cry.

"What did you do? When you saw it?"

"I - uhh -" Steve still didn't seem to want to say. He blew out a breath and looked at Bucky and looked away and scrubbed the back of his neck and gestured broadly. He smiled but he seemed embarrassed. "I put a thirty-seven hundred dollar DVD player through a reinforced wall."

Bucky - _his name was Bucky_ \- wasn't sure what to say to that. He wasn't sure what it meant.

"Did you get hurt?"

"No, but I'm not allowed to use tech equipment anymore." Steve smiled again as he said it. He smiled even though he looked like he wanted to cry. "Bucky, I am _so sorry_. I would've done anything to save you if I even _thought_ you'd survived the fall."

Bucky didn't remember falling from the train or what happened after and that was probably a good thing. He remembered what he'd read about it, though.

"You thought I was dead. Everybody thought I was dead. I should've been dead."

"I should've found a way to make sure," Steve said. "What you went through, what they did to you - you're my best friend, and I didn't go back for you."

 _His name was Bucky, Steve was his friend_.

"I don't remember what they did to me," Bucky said, and didn't know what to say after it. "I guess it must've been pretty bad."

Steve nodded, and nodded again, and choked out a harsh laugh.

"Yeah, it was pretty bad."

"Yeah," Bucky echoed. "I think maybe I wasn't a guy who'd give up easy."

He meant it seriously, meaning to take the blame from Steve for any rough treatment he'd endured, but Steve grinned at the remark.

"No, you weren't. You still aren't," he said.

 _He was Bucky Barnes. Steve was his friend. Had always been his friend._

Bucky walked over to the bed and almost asked, ' _can I sit?'_ before sitting down near Steve.

"What did they do to me?"

Steve shook his head but took a deep breath.

"They kept you in a freezing cold room, they beat you."

"Starved me?"

"No, actually. It looked like they kept offering you food and water, and you kept refusing it."

"Hmmm... I guess I'm making up for that lately."

"Yeah, that's a good thing." Steve said. He asked, "How do you feel about me seeing it?"

 _Steve was his friend. He was Bucky Barnes and Steve was his friend._

"Did everyone see it?"

Bucky didn't know who 'everyone' was, really. But he knew there were other people in Steve's life outside of this room. Even if he couldn't remember what had been done to him, he didn't want them to have seen it.

"No. Natasha transferred it from film to DVD, but she didn't watch it. I'm the only one who saw it." Steve gripped his hands together until his fingers were white. When he looked at Bucky, there were tears in his eyes. "I would've done anything to save you if I'd known you were alive."

Bucky - _his name was Bucky, Steve was his friend_ \- couldn't remember anything before his last memory wipe, but he'd studied everything he could about Steve at the museum display and he remembered everything about the prolonged battle they'd had aboard the helicarrier and he knew Steve wasn't telling the truth. Steve thought he was telling the truth, that he would've done ' _anything'_ to save Bucky but the truth was he wouldn't have.

"No, you wouldn't," he said to Steve. "You wouldn't have sacrificed the world. And Bucky -" _His name was Bucky. He was Bucky Barnes._ "I mean _I_ \- wouldn't have wanted you to."

"You were waiting for me," Steve said, like he was arguing. "You kept telling them I was coming to save you. But I didn't. I didn't save you."

 _His name was Bucky. Steve was his friend._

"If I expected you to save me, then I expected you to save the world, first. What good would saving me have been if the bombs on that plane reached New York? If those helicarriers had killed millions of people? I'm sorry for all the people I killed and all the pain I caused. All of that shouldn't have happened. But I wouldn't have wanted you to save me, and you wouldn't have saved me, if it meant sacrificing all those people."

When he finished talking, Steve was staring at him, his expression pulled in like he was going to yell or argue or growl, and Bucky - _his name was Bucky -_ braced himself for whatever was going to happen.

But then Steve blinked and looked down at his hands still gripped together in his lap.

"You're right," he said. "I wouldn't have sacrificed those people. Not even to save you."

"No, you did what you had to do. What you knew you had to do," Bucky said. "I kind of think that makes you the good guy, right?"

It took a while for Steve to answer. "It doesn't feel like it," he said quietly. "It feels like I abandoned you."

Bucky - _his name was Bucky, Steve was his friend -_ knew that he couldn't remember very far back, but what he could remember was enough.

"Okay. You didn't look for me when you didn't know I was alive. But when you did know, by the time you realized I was alive, you already knew I'd destroyed the world, and even so -" he cut off Steve's immediate denial of that, "- _even so_ , you never stopped believing I could be saved, that despite everything I was _worth_ saving. Even though anybody else on earth would've just as soon destroyed me, you never stopped looking, you or someone you asked to help you. You never stopped trying to save me. That's what a good guy does. So, yeah, you're a good guy."

By the time Bucky finished, he was breathing hard. That was the most he'd said and the strongest opinion he'd voiced, ever, as far as he could remember. He waited for Steve's reaction.

 _He was safe. Steve was his friend._

Steve smirked, raising his eyebrows and huffing a laugh.

"All right, I got it. You think I'm a good guy."

Out of nowhere Bucky heard himself add, "A good guy or a punk," and Steve laughed out loud.

"Says you, jerk," he said only it meant something else and Bucky felt tears in his eyes for the first time that he could ever remember.

"End of the line, right?" He asked. Steve smiled and put his hand on Bucky's shoulder.

"To the end of the line."

 _He was Bucky, Steve was his friend._

##


End file.
